Karmic Balance

2004-07-08, 05:28

I’ve come to realize that I’ve been looking at this movie karma thing all wrong. See, it’s not movie karma that I’m accruing here. It’s media karma. See, while my movie karma has been almost uniformly horrible, my book and music karma has been singularly excellent. Take, for example, my most recent book purchase. Two piece of SF bubblegum from Tanya Huff, Valor’s Choice and The Better Part of Valor, David Rees’ masterful, biting and timely Get Your War On (also available as a netcomic), Sharon Shinn’s wonderful Angelica and the utterly spellbinding King Rat. Each of them a great read in their own right. Obviously this is where I get back the karma I burn by seeing tripe like The Day After Tomorrow.

The funny thing is the way I go about buying this stuff. Each purchase is carefully considered. I spend time mulling over how much I want each book, and what my book (or music) priority is, and where in the purchase order this stuff should go. Sure, sometimes I’ll see something that I haven’t been able to find for ages (like King Rat) and just buy it on the spur of the mo’, but generally it’s a complicated and mysterious bit of voodoo I go through before buying books or music.

And then I’ll just pull $13.50 out of my wallet and set it on fire by walking into a theater to see Van Helsing.

I’ve figured out why this is. Books and music are, by and large, pretty solitary things to enjoy. Movies are social. I never go see a movie alone, but gather a bunch of friends (or even just one) and I’ll even go see The House of the Dead.

Stupidity grows in packs.

(By the way, I’m only linking to Amazon.ca because that’s where I found info for each book – I don’t get anything from them for these links.)